The Last One

“It is done!” – Revelation 21:6

We are here! Today is our last day in our one-year Bible reading plan (a few days short of an actual year, due to some glitch in the adaptation). There is a particular sense of accomplishment in a task finished, isn’t there? When you pull a cake out of the oven, turn over the last page in a book, put the final touches on a drawing. There are probably far too many projects in life we don’t finish, the life-equivalent of TLDR (Too Long, Didn’t Read). Our good intentions too often run out, reflections perhaps of the fact that we didn’t really care enough, or that we simply lacked the perseverance or resources it would have taken to complete what we started.

 

God never leaves a project undone. “I am sure of this,” Paul writes in Philippians 1:6, “that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” This day comes so beautifully here in the last two chapters of Revelation. The proclamation of God that his work is finished occurs three times in the Bible: at creation (Genesis 2:3), on the cross (John 19:30), and here, at the re-creation of the world. Creation, redemption, and re-creation: God never intended to leave the story unfinished, and we carry the hope of knowing how it will end. 

 

How was this Bible reading experience for you? What is your reading plan for tomorrow? For the point, after all, was never to finish the year, but to develop a lifetime habit of daily Bible reading. My plan for continuing is pretty simple: stick a bookmark at the Old Testament, Psalm, Proverbs, and New Testament, and read through one chapter of each a day—I like how this plan chose from those sections, but this way I don’t have to look up exactly what verse to read to, which is fine given there’s no pressure to finish in a year anyway. But your plan might be different; the point is to find something that works. 

 

And if you can, try writing something every day: one thing that stood out to you from the reading. One verse you can scribble down to think on throughout the day. One point of application. One short prayer. Writing helps you consume what you read. It pushes you to read more actively. It takes the seed of the word and burrows it down deeper into the soil of your heart and mind so that it can grow.

 

To all those who are still seeing these posts a year out: thanks for reading! Your invisible presence has encouraged me immensely. May we continue reading and talking about what we’ve read together!

Robbing God

“But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.” – Malachi 3:8-10

I can think of people in my life—Dave would be among them—who have the gift of generosity. Who just as easily give away money as keep it. But that is something I’ve historically struggled with. It’s ugly to admit, but I tend to feel entitled to what I earn. A while back, I wrote a piece to myself entitled, “Why does God own everything?” and listed four main reasons: because he created it (“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein,” Psalm 24:1-2). Because he can take it away at any time (“The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away,” Job 1:21). Because we can’t take it with us after we die (“For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world,” 1 Timothy 6:7). And because he enables me to earn what I do. It is only by his grace that I was born a woman in the late 1900’s and not the late 1800’s; that I had a supportive family and educational opportunities; and so on. Deuteronomy 8:17-18 says, “Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth.” 

 

God owns everything, and this should change how I live. It does not negate the need for financial wisdom and prudence, but it frees me from anxiety and the desire to control money as a primary means of security. It shoots down my pride. It should lead to greater contentment, freedom from the need to compare what I have with others, and an even greater ability to materially enjoy what I do have. And it should lead me to give willingly, because what I have is not mine but God’s. He means it when he says we rob him when we keep for ourselves what should be accounted as his.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected… the disciple must receive his portion from God every day. If he stores it up as a permanent possession, he spoils not only the gift, but himself as well, for he sets his heart on his accumulated wealth, and makes it a barrier between himself and God. Where our treasure is, there is our heart, our security, our consolation, and our God.” My old pastor put it more succinctly: “Money is like manure: if you spread it around, it helps things grow. If you hoard it all in one big pile, it stinks.” Sometimes it’s good to be reminded of these not-so-self-evident truths.

Binding Wounds

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” – Psalm 147:3

On the inpatient surgical service, wound dressing typically fell to the medical student or intern during morning rounds, whoever was lowest on the totem pole. The team would stride in, the senior resident asking the patient a few questions while the junior resident did “single-point” auscultation (placing the stethoscope at the lower sternum to hit up heart and abdomen at the same time—notoriously sloppy but efficient). One of them would peel back the dressing, examine the site, then orders would be issued and entered while the team strode off to the next room, leaving the student or intern to redress the wound.

 

Those were the quieter moments on rounds, taking out packs of gauze and paper tape from my white coat pocket, fielding residual questions from the patient. If you think about it, the binding of a wound is an intimate and thoughtful act. It says, I see your hurt, your imperfect places, the things you might not show other people, the places you’ve been wounded or where you carry pain. I am reaching out to touch those places so they can be healed.

 

People like to talk about giving yourself compassion, about forgiving and being kind to yourself. But really, I have nothing to give myself. The only way I can bear my brokenness is to turn to a God who binds up my wounds. Who offers grace when I expect judgment, who sees and understands the depths of my struggles as no one else can. To give myself compassion is merely to receive the compassion He gives to me. I must see myself as forgiven because He has forgiven me. I must be gentle with myself because He is gentle with me. I must have the strength to heal and go on because that is the unspoken purpose in bandaging anything at all. 

 

And He is no minion, no minor member of the team. The next verse says, “He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.” How jarring: this would be like the attending, the director of the entire surgical service, showing up on morning rounds just to rebandage some patient’s incision. But this is precisely how God uses his power. May we encounter this Healer who “lifts up the humble” (verse 6), who reaches out to touch us in our brokenhearted places. 

Worship In Numbers

“Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.” – Revelation 19:6

What is the biggest group you’ve ever participated in vocal worship with? For me it would probably be singing with two thousand people at an Urbana conference twenty years ago. Yet even that pales next to what John experiences here. Can you imagine so many people worshipping that the sound is like the roaring of water or pealing of thunder? 

 

There is something about corporate, vocal worship that cannot be replaced. John does not hear in heaven the sound of thousands of people joining a zoom call, or putting together their thoughts on a google doc. He hears their voices together, bodies together, celebrating the marriage supper of the Lamb. It hit me while reading these verses how much I miss that. There is a power, an awakening, an assurance, even an active element of sanctification, that happens when we join in physical deed and voice with others in worship of God. There is a preoccupation with Jesus and his glory that happens when we lose ourselves in a group. There is a particular kind of testimony that is proclaimed when we congregate and proclaim words in unity. There is a speaking that happens not just to God, but to each other. There is a doubling of joy when we share our own joy in God with others. Martin Luther once wrote, “In my own house, there is no warmth or vigor in me, but in the church when the multitude is gathered together, a fire is kindled in my heart and it breaks its way through.”

 

I feel sad that we can’t do that right now. The loss of physical corporate worship must be grieved, and I will certainly not take it for granted when it happens again.

 

At the same time, livestreamed worship is still corporate worship. We’re still singing words of praise at the same time, still united in worship and prayer before God. In fact, learning that we are part of a larger body even when we can’t see or feel the members of that body is an important spiritual skill. Hebrews 12:1 says that we are “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses”—do you realize that all the believers who have gone before us are watching us, right now? They are joined with us in a very real way, in worship and perhaps even in prayer, whether or not we can see them. And even when we were meeting as a physical congregation in our church sanctuary, the spiritual reality is that we were also joined with all the other believers in all the other churches in our city and around our world in worship of God. One day, we will be able to see these invisible truths in their physical reality. One day, we will be able to meet again in person in our church sanctuary. One day, we will meet all the saints, and all the believers around the world, in the very throne room of God, and hear our voices mingle with theirs in a great roar of joyful worship.

Prophecies and Pottery

“And they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver. Then the Lord said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter’—the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord, to the potter.” – Zechariah 11:12-13

The book of Zechariah, set after the Israelites’ return from exile, reads like a “wild ride” full of non-linear narrative and startling imagery (see Read Scripture video). The first eight chapters are a series of nighttime visions set in a chiastic structure; the last six are a series of Messianic visions. In fact, about 54 passages from Zechariah are echoed in about 67 different places in the New Testament, with the majority of those found in Revelation.

One prophecy I had never caught before occurs in this enacted parable in chapter 11. Zechariah becomes a shepherd who is rejected by his peers and paid out by sheep traders who plan to slaughter the flock. It’s a tragic story with a startling detail: Zechariah gets paid thirty pieces of silver to leave, the same amount that Judas got paid to betray Jesus. Lay this passage out next to Matthew 26-27, and other similarities emerge: there is haggling over the price (Zechariah 11:12, Matthew 26:15), an attempt to return the money by casting it into God’s house (Zechariah 11:13, Matthew 27:5), and ultimately the money’s use towards the potter (Zechariah 11:13, Matthew 27:7).

What is all this about the silver and the potter? Thirty pieces of silver was the amount paid if a slave was gored by an ox (Exodus 21:32)—it was what a slave, a damaged piece of goods, was worth. Zechariah speaks of it as a “lordly price” in sarcasm. A potter’s field was an area where clay was extracted, or a dump for broken shards of pottery—either way, it was cheap land. Zechariah experienced through this story what Jesus did: coming as the true shepherd who loves his sheep, only to be rejected and devalued. 

Ironically, Jesus was gored, by the nails and the spear. He died priced as a slave, his life worth only enough to buy a chunk of cheap land. Zechariah breaks his staffs of Favor and Union in this first parable only to take up the “equipment of a foolish shepherd” in the next, a shepherd who destroys and devours the sheep (Zechariah 11:15-17). We all follow some kind of shepherd. The question is which one: the shepherd who brings a favor and union that leads to life, or the one whose end is destruction?

Steadfast Love

“The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” – Psalm 145:8

One thing I feel acutely aware of these days are the limits of my emotional reserves. If I begin each day with a certain amount of emotional capital, then I make withdrawals every time I exercise patience while teaching the kids, buffer an emotional outburst or negative mood, or address an iceberg issue. These things take a forbearance that costs something, and the cost is higher if I am physically tired or meeting simultaneous needs at once. 

My reserves are not unlimited. When there is a good flow of input as well as output, I don’t notice this so much, but make nothing but withdrawals for long enough, and the limits of my patience become clear. Eventually it feels like I have to dig deeper and deeper to find the composure that the moment calls for. I need to replenish those reserves through respite, through receiving emotional care from others and from God, in order to keep going.

The Bible talks over and over about the chesed love of God. This word doesn’t really have an English equivalent—it is translated “steadfast” or “unfailing” love—but it basically marries two ideas, the idea of love, and the idea of commitment. God’s love for us is not based on us. It is a setting of the will to love, regardless of how we respond to him, and regardless of how He feels. It is as if God greets us each day with an unlimited reserve of love. His forbearance, his patience, his longsuffering love towards us is absolutely without limit or qualification.

Something as simple as the sun rising every single morning, without fail, reflects this chesed love of God. Walter Brueggeman reflects on this in his poem “At The Dawn”:

      Our first glimpse of reality this day—every day—is your fidelity.

      We are dazzled by the ways you remain constant among us… 

      Now, at the dawn, our eyes are fixed on you in gladness.

      We ask only that your faithfulness

         permeate every troubled place we are able to name,

         that your mercy

         move against the hurts to make new,

         that your steadfastness

         hold firmly what is too fragile on its own.

A Pure Heart

“It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes.” – Revelation 14:4

“Another angel, a second, followed, saying, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality.” – Revelation 14:8

Clearly these verses are speaking about virginity and sexual immorality in a metaphorical manner. And yet it is not without reason that this particular metaphor occurs in the Bible so frequently. There is nothing quite so challenging and concrete about my desire to follow Jesus as my attention towards sexual purity, and an indispensable element of any quest for sexual purity is spiritual.

Often this is a topic relegated to the mere matter of not crossing certain lines before marriage, when nothing could be further from the truth. Sexual purity is a life-long asking of the question, how do I honor God sexually, through my body, mind, and emotions? –-and then learning to live out the answer in perseverance, humility, and community. The nature of the answer may change after marriage, but the question by no means goes away. 

I was surprised to read about this during a discussion on solitude in Thomas Merton’s book New Seeds of Contemplation. He writes, “One vitally important aspect of solitude is its intimate dependence on chastity… Nowhere is self-denial more important than in the area of sex, because this is the most difficult of all natural appetites to control and one whose undisciplined gratification completely blinds the human spirit to all interior light.”

I would apply chastity here not as the absence of sex, but living with sexual purity before God in my thought life and actions—and this requires intentionality. Merton continues, “It demands considerable effort, watchfulness, patience, humility, and trust in Divine grace. But the very struggle for chastity teaches us to rely on a spiritual power higher than our own nature, and this is an indispensable preparation for interior prayer. Furthermore, chastity is not possible without ascetic self-sacrifice in many other areas. It demands a certain amount of fasting, it requires a very temperate and well-ordered life, modesty, restraint of curiosity… and many other virtues.”

Ultimately, sexual purity is a submission of not just a part, but my whole self to God. It involves aligning other areas of my life under His rule, just as other areas are affected by sexual sin. “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23). This is not easy, but God can give us clarity, freedom and joy in our journeys. May we be willing to follow the Lamb wherever he may take us, so that one day we may stand before him with pure hearts.

A Liturgy for Domestic Days

by Douglas McKelvey, excerpt:

Many are the things that must be daily done.
Meet me therefore, O Lord,
in the doing of the small, repetitive tasks.

In the cleaning and ordering and

maintenance and stewardship of things—

   of dishes, of floors, of carpets

   and toilets and tubs,

   of scrubbing and sweeping

   and dusting and laundering—

That by such stewardship I might bring

a greater order to my own life,

and to the lives of any I am given to serve,

so that in those ordered spaces 

bright things might flourish:

fellowship and companionship,

creativity and conversation,

learning and laughter

and enjoyment and health.

As I steward the small, daily tasks,

may I remember these good ends,

and so discover in my labors

the promise of the eternal hopes that underlie them. …

And so I offer this small service to you, O Lord,

for you make no distinction between

   those acts that bring a person

   the wide praise of their peers

and those unmarked acts

   that are accomplished in a quiet obedience

   without accolade.

You see instead the heart, the love,

and the faithful stewardship

of all labors, great and small. …

O God, grant that my heart

might be ordered aright,

knowing that all good service

faithfully rendered

is first a service rendered unto you.

Receive then this my service,

that even in the midst of labors that

hold no happiness in themselves,

I might have increasing joy.

Amen.

Disappointment

“You looked for much, and behold, it came to little.” – Haggai 1:9

“Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.” – Charlotte Bronte, Villette

It is so easy to feel disappointed in life, by the outcome of a project or teaching effort, by the person we married or the people we parent, by ourselves, by our friends. Sometimes it’s easy to think like one character in a Patricia McCormick book does: “Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don’t expect anything, you don’t get disappointed.” How do we live in the face of disappointment without becoming cynical? How do we hope, yet not have the kind of expectation that leads to crushing disappointment?

Here in Haggai, God speaks to a disappointed people. After 70 years of exile, the Israelites had finally been given permission to return to Jerusalem—an event that surely bore the hopes of a lifetime—yet things were not going all that great. They were met on every side by functional disappointment: sowing without harvest, eating without fill, clothing without warmth, earning money only to lose it again. And this is the word that Haggai brings from God: “Consider your ways.” The problem was, they had come back focused on rebuilding their own houses, but neglected to build the house of God. God’s house was the avenue to and symbol of his very presence. They wanted to live life on their own terms, for their own dreams, rather than God’s.

We bear disappointment without becoming cynical by seeing that disappointment is not the end of the story. It is not a call to shut down our hopes, but to reorder them. It is disappointment that guides us to that reordering, that invites us to consider our ways. Disappointment demands that we more closely and carefully examine the nature and foundation of our expectations. Were we placing our hopes in a result or a methodology that was more our own than God’s? Are we willing to accept the workings of his purposes, on his timetable, in our lives? Reordering means that we continue to see and embrace the longing beneath our hopes, but that we yield them to God in a way that “builds his house,” that acknowledges his presence, power and purposes before our own.

Often what this practically feels like is a continual process of naming and submitting my longings in God’s presence. Of praying for the change I hope to see in people rather than demanding that change on my timetable. Of receiving God’s consolation and compassion during moments of despair. Of allowing the natural disappointments in life to strengthen my hopes for eternity. Disappointment should not abolish our hopes, but purify them. May we consider our ways with care as we invite God into those places in our lives.

Incense

“Let my prayer be counted as incense before you.” – Psalm 141:2

“The four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” – Revelation 5:8

One of the neat things about a reading plan that draws from four different parts of the Bible is how it allows you to more easily see concordant themes and imagery. If you were to take your finger and trace the topic of incense throughout the Bible, you might start in Exodus 30, which begins the story with a recipe, with the language of shekels and grams. The combination of myrrh, cinnamon, aromatic cane, cassia, and olive oil for the tabernacle incense is precise, costly, and patented: “you shall make no other like it in composition” (Exodus 30:32). We would trace through the books of the kings how personally God takes it when incense is burned to other gods. We would begin to understand what it all means through David’s plea, then finally see its full meaning in Revelation. Our prayers rise like incense into the very throne room of God in heaven.

How are our prayers like incense? They are intentional, just as the incense was made according to exact specifications. They are regular, just as the incense was burned every morning and evening. They are communal, just as everyone contributed to the resources used to make the incense. They are personal, just as incense was never burned in random but unto another being. They are costly, a privilege bought by Jesus’ blood, just as the incense was made of costly spices. 

But I think the most beautiful thing about incense is the way it spreads. It creates an aroma that fills the space it inhabits, and lingers there. It is impossible for anyone in that space to not smell the aroma—because we must by nature breathe, and because air molecules are not by nature easily separable, we cannot choose to not smell something as easily as we could, say, choose to close our eyes to not see something. Though invisible, aromas are powerful because of their ability to disperse and permeate. And typically, the smell of incense is sweet.

Our prayers are like that: invisible, but powerful, rising up to God. Filling the space with something which all in that throne room could sense, that all would receive as sweet, and powerful, and present. Our prayers allow us, in a way, to join the elders and creatures in worship of God in that place. All that prayers are, in their adoration and thanksgiving and lament and petition, are ultimately worship. Let my prayer be like incense before you, David writes. May it be counted so for us all.

The Dragon, the Woman, and the Child

“And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it… but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled…” – Revelation 12:4-6

A homeschooling mom gave me a great tip: pay attention to what your child reads just like you would be aware of what they eat. “Candy” books are fine, but they shouldn’t comprise their entire diet. One thing she does is pick a “stretch” book, one a bit beyond her kids’ reading level. They snuggle together on the couch, and she reads it aloud to them, occasionally having them read a paragraph to her as well. 

The book we picked to read with our older kids is Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. Revisiting Middle Earth reminds me of how so many of these stories are gripping because they function on two levels: an epic one, and an ordinary one. There is Frodo stealing mushrooms and men battling for thrones on one level, but then the secret quest to destroy the ring on the other. In Star Wars, there are battles against the Empire and Han’s escapades on one level, but then the mission of the Jedi to defeat the dark side on the other. In Ender’s Game, there are battle-school games on one level, but then the confrontation between humanity and the buggers on the other. In the Stormlight Archives, there are politics and wars on one level, but then the rediscovery of magic to fight a looming threat on the other. 

The ordinary stories are what makes the characters human and relatable: but it is the epic storyline that determines whether any of them, or their world, will survive. Reading Revelation is a bit like stepping into one of these stories. On one hand, you have John, an older guy stuck in a cave on a rocky island writing his last letter. On the other hand, you have the visions he records, which are like God pulling back a curtain to reveal epic tableaus that are no less real for being less seen.

This particular vision is of a woman with a crown of twelve stars; she is thought to represent the Israelites (12 tribes, Micah 4:10) or the church (12 apostles). She gives birth to a child holding an iron scepter, thought to represent Jesus (Psalm 2:9). But as the child is about to be born, there waits for him a red dragon, the color of blood and war, with seven heads symbolizing complete evil, bearing seven crowns like a counterfeit king (Revelation 19:12,16). Later we are told the great dragon is “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan” (Revelation 12:9). Like other epic stories, this plot involves a battle against good and evil—only it is entirely true.

We exist on both levels, the ordinary and the epic, the visible and the invisible, and to miss one is to not fully understand how to live in the other. As the authors of a BSF study wrote, “Satan has waged a cosmic war against God, and our daily lives are nothing less than the battleground. That is the context of our human existence.”

Satan and his forces are not necessarily behind everything that happens to us. But neither should we make the mistake of thinking he is not very much at work in our daily lives. The battles that we fight every day are significant precisely because they occur within the context of a much larger one, and we would do well to remember that.